The Music Behind All Music

From Gospel Translations

The creation surrounding us is the product of the triune God. That is incredible enough. But take one more profound step and we discover, as Pastor John explains in The Pleasures of God, that “creation is an expression of the overflow of that life and joy that the Father and the Son have in each other” (72).

To put this another way, we see a kaleidoscope of galaxies, animals, and music genres because the Father and Son enjoy a kaleidoscope of delight in each other, and it is a spilling-over delight. As the triune delight spills over in creation, it expands and radiates outward for us to share in. Out of this throbbing delight we have creation, a creation that speaks.

We live on a sphere inside a broken universe that all must be remade, but nonetheless it is a sphere filled with endless beauty and color and fragrance for us to enjoy. And tracing this creation back to God’s delight in himself is worthy of much consideration and it is a theme Michael Reeves develops in his forthcoming book Delighting in the Trinity.

He begins by considering Psalm 19:1:

It is easy to read that as nothing but a reference to divine power and immensity. You look up at the sky and contemplate the transcendent might and supremacy of the Creator. But God’s power tells us only how he was able to bring everything into being. It does not tell us why.

Now look up to the sky again. The triune God has not merely put a star here and a star there; he has lavished the skies with millions and billions of them. As Psalm 19 goes on to say, there in the sky he has placed the sun, which gives warmth, light and life to the world. There too are the clouds which drop down rain to make things grow. The heavens declare the loving generosity of God. And that is why he created.

So next time you look up at the sun, moon and stars and wonder, remember: they are there because God loves, because the Father’s love for the Son burst out that it might be enjoyed by many. And they remain there only because God does not stop loving. He is an attentive Father who numbers every hair on our heads, for whom the fall of every sparrow matters; and out of love he upholds all things through his Son, and breathes out natural life on all through his Spirit.

And he concludes with this summary:

Indeed, in the triune God is the love behind all love, the life behind all life, the music behind all music, the beauty behind all beauty and the joy behind all joy. In other words, in the triune God is a God we can heartily enjoy — and enjoy in and through his creation.*

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• Excerpted from pages 43–44 in The Good God, which is available in the U.K. and will be released in September in the U.S. under the title Delighting in the Trinity. For more see John Piper, chapter 3, “The Pleasure of God in His Creation, in The Pleasures of God (Multnomah, 2012), 61–80, and also John Piper and Jonathan Edwards, God's Passion for His Glory (Crossway, 1998), 155–157.